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US civil rights campaigners honour chair of Mozilla Foundation

Mozilla's chairwoman Mitchell Baker is one of the three recipients of this year's Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) Pioneer Awards. By awarding the prize to Mitchell Baker, the US civil rights campaigners honour the Mozilla Foundation's efforts to promote openness, innovation, and opportunity on the internet. EFF also mentions that in her role as attorney responsible for all legal issues at Netscape, Mitchell wrote the Mozilla Public License.

Canadian law professor Michael Geist is honoured for his action against proposed changes of Canadian copyright law. His opposition caused the government to rethink and ultimately cancel introducing the legislation, said the EFF. The third award recipient is former AT&T employee Mark Klein, who acted as an expert witness for the EFF in its lawsuit over the illegal surveillance of US citizens.

The Pioneer Award was first awarded in 1991. It recognises individuals and organisations that have made significant and influential contributions to the development of digital communications. Past winners include World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee, Linux creator Linus Torvalds, and security researcher Bruce Schneier. This year the award will be presented at the O'Reilly Emerging Technology (ETech) Conference 2008 in San Diego on 4th March. The keynote will be delivered by Linspire founder Michael Robertson.